Video: “Star Trek Into Darkness” trailer

posted at 7:31 pm on March 21, 2013 by Allahpundit

To cleanse the palate. Here’s my problem: On some level, I just can’t accept “Trek” without the camp factor. That’s also why I’ve never much liked the occasional modern attempts to restart “The Twilight Zone.” They never get the tone right. It’s not that the new versions aren’t creepy enough or that the writing’s unimaginative, it’s that they can’t recapture the pedantic kitsch of Rod coming out with that cigarette at the start of each episode to frame This Week’s Lesson for you. One of the reasons “The Next Generation” succeeded, I think, was because it did manage to channel some of the original campiness. Never to a Shatnerian degree, true, but the sets looked like sets, the make-up looked like make-up, and no one seemed to take themselves terribly seriously. (I know, I know — that’s the product of a TV series having a lower budget. What can I say? Maybe “Trek” is better on the small screen.) In the trailer below, it’s seriousness and zillion-dollar F/X all the way. The brooding, 90210-ish, ostentatiously “intense” Kirk is especially jarring. Is that how he was in the first movie or is this trailer catching him at especially melodramatic moments?

If I’m not mistaken, that’s the Enterprise doing a belly flop into the harbor at the end. So there’s that.

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I heard this trailer gives away way too much of the plot, so I’ll just wait 8 more weeks for the movie to open.

As far as Trek without the camp, Wrath of Khan had plenty of scenery chewing by Ricardo Montalban and to a slightly lesser extent Shatner, but most of the movie was played straight and it got very dark at times. And Search For Spock was arguably even darker in tone(albeit with a much more upbeat ending).

The brooding, 90210-ish, ostentatiously “intense” Kirk is especially jarring. Is that how he was in the first movie or is this trailer catching him at especially melodramatic moments?

In the reboot Kirk was a pompous jerk with good intentions. It looks like he still has some of the backtalking and big mouth from the first movie, but with a bit more of an air of righteous indignation here.

One of the reasons “The Next Generation” succeeded, I think, was because it did manage to channel some of the original campiness

I’d disagree. Next Gen had its own flavor. It didn’t have its Trouble with Tribbles episodes in terms of campiness (the closest it came to original Trek campiness was any episode with Q). Picard was highly distinct from Kirk, and Riker with the beard always brought a greater degree of seriousness than you’d ever see on the original show.

Cheap sets? Bad make-up? Your age is showing. The “kids” who buy movie tickets would see the early Trek as a SNL segment. When they laugh at something, everyone laughs. When they are in awe, everyone is in awe. The elaborate sets of their video games and massive, detailed destruction would shame the original Trek back into the trailer.

The kids are a lot like this new “Kirk”. Melodrama without a clear plan. They, like him “just know what they can do…” they want to make history without a clear idea of what they are doing or whether the fit is there.

Spending money on a grand scale to avoid the exercise of imagination sure fits the whole cultural meme today, too.

I MUCH prefer this to the later Star Treks….the last ones just were tedious, because you “had” to do certain things…Data had to do this or worry about emotions…We had to have moments with Troi or with Ryker…these fan-boi touch stones began to weigh down the series…

Don’t have that NOW, do we? That universe is all gone…and now we can explore other parts of the house….

The Old series was like Dr Sheldon Cooper,it was OCD, with it’s touch stones…it’s shibboleths, all of which are gone…and that makes the new series much more refreshing…

Side Note: I prefer Daniel Craig as 007, too, even more so than Connery..so mayhap I’m just an iconoclast.

All the viewer really knows about that ship is that it is a Constellation Class starship, which Starfleet has many of in the Roddenberry universe. It is not necessarily the Enterprise, although it probably is. I am looking forward to seeing this.

I hated the MARS-1…but then I hated Damnation Alley…we fielded the V-150 with the 81mm mortar and either the V-150 w/20mm or the 90mm Cockerill…I believe that it is important to bring lots of fire power to one’s rebuilding projects.

Is that how he was in the first movie or is this trailer catching him at especially melodramatic moments?

I thought the best part of the reinvented Trek Kirk in the first movie was that the actor had really good comedic timing. He was pretty funny with his WTF? reactions. If they lose that in this movie then that’s a definite negative.

I think I read somewhere that Mike Stoklasa, the guy who created the hour-long YouTube deconstructions of the Star Wars prequels described the Star Trek reboot as having the fun, zippy, vaguely campy tone and pacing that the Star Wars prequels should have had. I suppose if you view the new Trek movies along those lines, rather than anything connected with the Trek that ran from 1966 through Star Trek: Enterprise, it’s bit more palatable. But I miss the postwar manly confidence of Shatner, Kelly and Doohan, and even Nimoy’s Spock in his own idiosyncratic way.

One of the reasons “The Next Generation” succeeded, I think, was because it did manage to channel some of the original campiness.

Never occurred to me anyone would think ST is campy.

Anyway, as long as there are black holes with event horizons about a football field across that “threaten the galaxy” when they are near Romulus but have no effect elsewhere; as long as you can fly into and out of said black holes; as long as the enterprise can park itself anywhere in the galaxy in about five minutes; as long as the warp nacelles sometimes seem to work like rocket engines; as long as massive, space-faring ships are being fabricated on the ground instead of in space; — as long as Orion slave girls are in Star Fleet and as oversexed as ever — as long as it is as abjectly, insultingly stupid as the first one, but is filled with action and mindless adventure —

Camp? In theatre, you know it is a set but you suspend that because the story carries it. And the acting. This is the problem with the High Def junk: it misses the point of science fiction, which is the fantasy and what if quality.

Camp? In theatre, you know it is a set but you suspend that because the story carries it. And the acting. This is the problem with the High Def junk: it misses the point of science fiction, which is the fantasy and what if quality.
AshleyTKing on March 21, 2013 at 8:50 PM

Good point. But people go to see movies these days for the CGI-FX – it’s just a wide screen videogame; if a lot of things get blowed up real good then it’s Oscar material.

Let’s see…in the first movie a punk kid who had no business being in Starfleet Academy is about to be kicked out for disorderly conduct and poor performance, so he sneaks aboard the Enterprise and for no good reason is promoted to Captain because everyone else there is even less qualified them he is.

I’m not sure how many people realized this. Spock’s mother was killed. Their planet was destroyed. They have altered time because Volcan and Spock’s mother existed during the original series.

They can do anything they want now from here on out without adhering to the series. So, in the new Star Trek life, campiness never happens.

I personally never liked the low budget. I never liked the movies either, or Star Trek Next Generation.

I loved the idea of Trek. I enjoyed the relationships and the Kirk character. Say what you want about him, but Capt. Kirk exemplified a great leader. The Captains who followed in the other series were jokes.

But the Kirk in the movies I didn’t care for. Too much brooding over his age and all that crap.

But they have altered the future in these new movies. They have set it up so the future could be completely different than what it was during the original series.

I always felt that the next generation series worked because it was the same as kirk and Spock except the rolls were reversed. Picard was the serious Spock type, and Riker was the Kirk styled risk taker.

That said I look forward to the new trek franchise. It helps to erase the Scott bakula Enterprise series from bring the finale of star trek.

Perhaps my favorite Kirk-Trek casting moment was putting perennial tough-guy Charles Napier in the role of a space hippy poet with curly blonde locks. Having first recognized him as the typical ‘Herbert’ character in Rambo 2 and then as the Adam I knew from my childhood viewing of Trek was a laugh-inducing experience.

Holltwood made “The Avengers” by cobbling together other movies, so maybe soon they will make “The Revengers” by cobbling this Startrek villain together with Bain in Batman and that unnatural blond villain in the latest Bond and a bunch more. They wouldn’t want to be too creative now.

I suppose I would be considered a Trekkie, I have to say I love the reboot of the series. I think the recasting has mostly worked and the first movie was fantastic. Once I accepted the way they explained the changing of Trek history in order to free up the writers then I thoroughly enjoyed the first movie with Chris Pine as Capt Kirk. I think he has doing a good job taking over for Shatner, although there will never be another William Shatner. So lighten up on the new movies, they needed to get some energy and I welcome it.

And while we’re talking about Star Trek, why did the Star Trekers keep using the same hull number for every ‘Enterprise’ with a tacked on letter? Was there something sacred about the 1960’s Enterprise’s hull number? Should the US Navy’s new CVN-80 ‘USS Enterprise’ be re-designated as CV-6C?

As far as Trek without the camp, Wrath of Khan had plenty of scenery chewing by Ricardo Montalban and to a slightly lesser extent Shatner, but most of the movie was played straight and it got very dark at times. And Search For Spock was arguably even darker in tone(albeit with a much more upbeat ending).

Doughboy on March 21, 2013 at 7:36 PM

Well, that may be good and fine, but Allah has made himself clear. He’d rather be watching the Wrath of Corn.

What a bunch of moaning, it’s pathetic. Yes I loved the original, I watched it when it was first on. Yes it could be a little campy at times, how many worlds did they run across that just happened to have the exact same history as the earth? Utterly ridiculous, you couldn’t make a movie based on that. Well, Mel Brooks could have.

What they got right: the characters and how they personally interact. Yes, Kirk is cocky, get over it. Now it’s got car chases and explosions, get over that too. The new Scotty is great, the Spock-Uhura thing has potential. Chekov has much more potential for a bigger role. Enjoy the spectacle and quit your whining.

am a big “Star Trek” fan, and can’t for the life of me understand why “Voyager” wasn’t given a movie.

Really? I liked certain aspects of Janeway but even I as a fellow woman can admit she did not have the appeal of the male captains.

Oh wait, that’s a feature, not a bug. God, I loved Picard. I loved (original) Kirk too, but for different reasons.

AP, you really have to treat the reboot as something totally unrelated to the original (just as TNG was, in my opinion).

Ken Gentner on March 22, 2013 at 12:03 AM

This. I loved TOS from the time I was a kid and later loved the TNG series and especially First Contact. But the old stuff was played out. This bears no resemblance to the Star Trek iterations I knew and loved growing up, and that’s fine. I take it as a good popcorn flick and that’s it.

But I miss the postwar manly confidence of Shatner, Kelly and Doohan, and even Nimoy’s Spock in his own idiosyncratic way.

This is a really good point. While I’m open-minded about the reboot, I do have a harder time accepting someone as boyish as Chris Pine as an authority figure. He’s got the looks, but not the aura of command. Shatner in his prime was not only incredibly easy on the eyes, he was a man and played Kirk as a man, not a boy. Same with Picard, whatever you may say about his more politically correct approach to conflict. It makes a difference.

The reason there was never a “Voyager” movie is because the series came to a conclusion; they returned home. Where could they possibly go from there?

As far as the Star Trek franchise: It was a cash cow that milked to the point where there was nothing left for it to give. It needed a shot in the arm. That’s why the producers decided to do something different with “Enterprise.” The problem, for me, is that Star Trek has always been an optimistic look toward the future; I have no real interest in looking backward.

Oh, SG, say it ain’t so. Please tell me you forgot the sarc tag. Nobody liked Voyager. It was waaaaay too politically correct. I can’t even name five episodes that I’d care to see again.

Odysseus on March 21, 2013 at 8:20 PM

Nobody liked it?
At the time, I didn’t care for it because I was comparing it to the far superior Deep Space Nine series – but after rewatching it on Netflix, I’d have to say it’s a good show. Not the best of the bunch, but a solid show…certainly better than the Star Trek reboot movie. And the way they dealt with the Borg was far more interesting than anything outside of Best of Both Worlds and First Contact.

BTW…Enterprise was a lot better than people gave it credit for, as well. Berman was unfairly slammed by the fanboys in the base (and what do they get as a reward? Chris Pine and JJ Abrams! ROFLMAO), and everyone else was suffering Trek fatigue.

BTW – my 10 year-old daughter loves Janeway and Seven of Nine. Positive female role models in entertainment are the exception, not the rule.